


A Kind Much Closer Than Friends Use

by theoneinquisitor



Series: celebration fills [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Humor, Liz's Celebration Fics, Mutual Pining, Pretty much just a short comedy between two doofuses who can't communicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 19:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18505240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoneinquisitor/pseuds/theoneinquisitor
Summary: It shouldn't take being forcefully trapped in a closet with nothing but coats and a bag of almonds for these two idiots to profess their love to each other, but here we are. - Jasper Jordan, probably.





	A Kind Much Closer Than Friends Use

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pawprinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pawprinter/gifts).



> For pawprinter, who asked for: a fluffy fic with the prompt where Bellamy and Clarke accidentally get locked in a lot or closed off back alley, and now have to survive* together (*disclaimer, neither of them were in any danger of anything except slight hunger, but they’re both over dramatic)?
> 
> So like, I did half the things you asked for here and I hope that's okay...I tried to make it as fluffy and them as dramatic as possible, but like, the only way it worked in my head is if they were forcefully locked in a room together to deal with their feelings? 
> 
> Anyway, song comes from 'If It Kills Me' by Jason Mraz, which is probably the most blarke song ever written.

Honest to God, there are several forms of torture Clarke would adamantly prefer over _this._

 **This** (adv.): indicative of the current situation which is as follows – being lured to her friend's house under the guise of quality time and  then subsequently being forcefully shoved into a closet the size of an old telephone booth with her ~~crush~~ best friend, whom she has been actively avoiding for the better part of two months.

 **“** Jasper, I swear on my sister’s life, if you don’t open this door right now—“  Bellamy is shaking the door so violently, she thinks the handle might rip off. His back is to her, purposefully, she’s sure, and at this point she’s resigned herself to dying in the closet because when Jasper commits to something, he _commits._ Even if Satan himself were to rise out of the pits of hell and demand him to open the door, he would absolutely refuse unless given what it is he’s asking for.

“Wow, Bell, you’re really going to put my life at risk?” Octavia calls from the other side, sounding more amused than anything. If she’s in on the ruse, too, they’re really fucking screwed. The only person more stubborn than Jasper is the younger Blake. Clarke often wonders how they manage as a couple, considering neither one knows how to back down, but she imagines the fighting is all part of the fun for them.

The grates of the door move slightly and she’s see’s tufts of black hair stick through them as Jasper presses his face to it. “I’ll open it when you two get your shit together!”

“And not a second sooner.” Octavia adds.

Both of their shadowy figures are soon replaced with light as they disappear. In between Bellamy’s cursing, she hears the distant sound of footsteps before the front door opens and closes. They had mentioned dinner plans, but she didn’t think they would just leave. Fuck. _They really said: fuck Bellamy and Clarke’s rights, in this house we force therapeutic talks even if it could potentially make things worse._

She kicks a crate of scarves and gloves to the side and slides to the ground. At least the closet has carpet.

 “Jasper!” Bellamy continues to pound on the door, walls shaking under the impact of his hand.

“They’re gone.”

She pulls an umbrella from underneath her ass as she tries to get comfortable. If the condition of release requires them to actually have a conversation about the things they’ve been avoiding for months, well, she better look for a pen and paper to write her last will.

_To Wells, I leave Charles Bukatski, please remember he only uses TidyCat litter, the rest makes him itchy. To Raven, my entire collection of Led Zeppelin albums, I’ve seen the way you eyeball them when you come over. To Monty, if it’s possible to move tomato plants, please feel free to dig up my garden. To Jasper, you get nothing but a middle finger and if I come back as a ghost I’m going to haunt the ever-loving--_

“How long do you think they’ll leave us in here before they’re obligated to let us out for health reasons?”

Her heart thuds painfully in her chest, and for moment she’s a bit overwhelmed with excitement because, wow, maybe she’ll go into cardiac arrest and won’t have to experience the absolute pain of this moment.

She swallows thickly. “How long can humans go without food and water? Like, twelve days or something?”

“Well, I guess we can finally catch up, huh?” He pushes a group of coats to the side and removes one from its hanger to bunch up on the ground. As he settles down, she closes her eyes and counts to ten. _Heart, if you’re going to give out, please do it now._

It doesn’t. Fucking traitor.

“So,” she starts awkwardly, picking up a random hand bag from the floor and shaking it. Change rattles inside. “How have you been?”

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

Three quarters, a dime, and several pennies fall out when she dumps it into the floor along with a tampon, several receipts, and small bag of almonds. She pockets the quarters and examines the small bag of nuts, searching for an expiration date. She’s hungry and desperate for a distraction.

“It’s a simple question.”

“Oh sure. I’ve been great, Clarke. Fan-fucking-tastic.” He says sarcastically, crossing him arms like a petulant ten year old throwing a tantrum. She has to bite her lip to keep from smiling because it’s so Bellamy – always priding himself on being the pinnacle of maturity but always manages to make the most childish gestures when he’s upset.

She spots what she thinks is the abbreviation for September and the number zero, choosing to believe that the expiration date is in 2020 and not two-thousand something. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The bag squeals as she opens it and without hesitation, she pops an almond into her mouth. A bit crunchier than normal, but not bad. Salted, at least.

She offers the bag to him. “Want one?”

“Sure.” He takes a small bite and grimaces. “These are definitely expired.” He eats the rest of it, anyway. When he reaches for another, she pulls the bag back quickly.

“We have to ration these if we want to survive.”

He rolls his eyes. “Nice to see your penchant for the drama hasn’t subsided.”

“Bell, you act like you haven’t seen me in years. It’s been a couple of months.’

“Yeah, well, when you’re used to talking to someone every day, a couple months feels like forever.” She can hear the bitterness in his voice and she wants to claw it from his throat. “When’s the last time we went more than few days without talking?”

Bellamy Blake, never one to make small talk. He likes to get to the fucking point, concisely if possible. It’s one of the things she’s always appreciated about him, what makes them mesh so well because she’s the total opposite. She’s a wordy bitch, she likes rambling and disjointed thoughts and taking forever to arrive at a destination when she talks.

“Probably sophomore year when you threw up on my favorite blouse and I had to drag your ass back to your dorm room without Wallace seeing.”

He winces. “Not my finest moment. But even then, I think you broke down and texted me within 24 hours.”

Staying mad at him has never been her forte. Every time she gets even the slightest bit annoyed with him, he’d always make some grand gesture for forgiveness. In that instance, he bought her a new (better, if she’s honest) blouse. Other times, he would fix her dinner, do her math homework, bring her flowers. Grovel at her feet, if she asked for it. Usually, it was just a single look, one that has never failed to break apart every single wall she put up.

“Well, you know what they say about college; it either brings you closer together or tears you apart.”

 “When has anyone ever said that?”

“Never. It sounded a lot better in my head.”

He laughs, though it’s unfamiliar. It’s almost pathetic, just a tired puff of air like someone’s done a quick one-two to his lungs. “You really gotta help me out here, Princess, because I’m lost. One minute we’re fine, and the next, you’re disappearing off the face of the Earth – no text, no call, and when I show up at your apartment, always conveniently not there. If I did something, please tell me, because at this point I’ll do whatever I need to do to fix it.”

 **It** (pronoun) **:** unbeknownst to Bellamy, in this case, the word refers to Clarke’s sudden epiphany nearly two months ago, during which she came to the earth-shattering, yet totally unsurprising, revelation that she is unquestionably, hopelessly in love with her best friend.

They were sitting in her apartment catching up on _Game of Thrones._ Nothing spectacularly extraordinary for them – they were drinking wine, per tradition, and there was some cuddling involved, which, they’ve always done. They’re both tactile people, okay? He likes playing with her hair, twirling the long blonde curls around his fingers and he’s doing just that when a scene between Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth comes up on the screen and he says: “I hope they end up together. They’re best friends, it just makes sense, you know?”

“Yeah,” she whispered back, “It does.”

And she had been prepared to tell him right then. The moment had presented itself and when he looked at her, she thought for moment that maybe, just maybe, he felt the same way. But then he’s telling her about his date with a girl from his Creative Writing class and she’s falling into an endless abyss of self-doubt and unexpected heartbreak.

She’s not proud of this fact, but when it comes to fight or flight, she’ll always choose the latter. So that’s what she did. When he left that night, she resolved to take a step back, focus on school and let time work its magic. Maybe if she didn’t see him for a while, she could stop feeling this way. And if she stopped feeling this way, they could be best friends and he could date, and everything would be fine.

Except, now she sees that all she did was hurt him and much as she was hurting herself. Was it really worth it?

“Clarke,” she feels his hand grip her wrist and she jumps at the contact. He let’s her go just as quickly with a mumbled apology and a sigh. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

 “Please don’t apologize,” she whispers back.

“I miss you. So much. And it’s weird because you’re my best friend, I _know_ you. But at the same time, it’s like you’re not really here.”

She feels like she’s going to throw up. She pulls another almond from the bag and pops it in her mouth, chewing slowly to buy herself some time. She thinks it over: if she tells him how she feels, she could lose him. IF she keeps ignoring him, she could lose him. If she tries to pretend her feelings aren’t there, maybe she gets to keep him but what happens to her? She keeps hurting, he stays oblivious, and in the end it still feels like no one wins.

As much as she hates Jasper for locking her in a fucking closet, maybe he knew that this was the only way it could happen. Clarke works best under pressure after all and if Bellamy rejects her, well, at least it’s in private and she can pretend it never happened outside these walls.

_Time to grow some fucking balls, Griffin._

She starts with, “I’m sorry.”

 **Sorry** (adj.): her list of apologies includes being sorry for – avoiding him, making him feel like he did something wrong, being a shit friend, and most importantly, falling in love with him because what a total fucking wreck.

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” he says gently, “I just want you to tell me what’s going on. I hate seeing you like this and I hate feeling like I’m the reason for it.”

Here goes nothing.

“You are the reason for it, but not how you think.”

“I’m not following…”

“You remember the last time we hung out?”

“Yeah, it was Thrones night. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out if I said something wrong of if something was off and I didn’t notice, but I mean, really, there was no warning. I must have missed something or…”

“You did, but it wasn’t super…obvious.”

He huffs. “The suspense is killing me.”

“You know I love building up the reveal.”

“Please don’t.”

“We were talking about Jaime and Brienne and their eternal love or whatever. And We were drinking the red wine, you know the one with the—”

“I hate you so much in this moment.”

When there’s an opening, she takes it. “Yeah well, I love you, so…”

The silence that follows is probably the most painful sound in the history of non-sounds. The house creaks, the acquired purse change jingles in her pocket as she shifts uncomfortably, and she thinks she can hear his heartbeat thudding rapidly in his chest. Or maybe it’s hers. Who knows at this point.

Finally, he says, “Define that for me.”

 **I Love You** (phrase): she’s referred to him as her ‘person’ on more than one occasion, which is the only way she can describe what they have. He knows every piece of her, the best and worst parts, and he still looks at her like she’s the most important person in the world. He can finish her sentences, guess what’s she’s thinking, never fails to make her smile, and ultimately, yeah, she just really, really, loves him.

For the first time in her life, she tries to make it concise. “I’m in love with you.”

But then he’s silent for too long and she can’t just let that silence sit or she will literally go insane, so she continues. “And I was going to tell you that night, but then you mentioned your date with Echo and I don’t know, I guess I got scared or self-conscious or both, because like, if you felt the same why would you date someone else, you know? But it was hard to be around you and so I avoided you and I’m really sorry, I should have just told you or maybe never told you—”

She’s so into her tangent, she doesn’t hear him cross the tiny space between them. She’s cut off by the feel of his hands cupping her cheeks forcing her eyes to his in the dim light peaking through the slats of the door. “For such a smart person, you can be so dense sometimes.”

“Um…”

“I honestly don’t know how it wasn’t more obvious, but I love you, too. I have for a while now.”

She searches his eyes, waits for the punch line or the joke, the familiar flash that always comes when he’s bluffing. But they’re locked on hers, his thumb stroking soft lines into her cheek and she feels like she’s on fire. He’s telling her he loves her back, he’s telling her exactly what she thought she’d never hear.

“Seriously?” her voice cracks on the -ly.

“The only reason I had agreed to go on that date was because I felt pathetic pining over you when you clearly weren’t interested. Or so I thought. I ended up cancelling it, by the way.”

She feels like she could throw up, cry, scream, and shout. All of the above. At once.

“You’re it, Princess.”

And damn it, her self-control breaks. It’s all too surreal, too perfect.

 **Perfect** (adj.): exactly how it feels to kiss him for the first time.

He’s soft but demanding, exploring her like he’s been waiting for this his entire life. She crawls into his lap, lets him hold her in ways she’s fantasized about once or twice. It’s beyond anything she could have imagined, having him this way. And to think, he’s felt the same way the whole time. She pulls back to take a breath.

“So, all of this could have been avoided if we weren’t stubborn and just told each other how we felt?”

“To be fair, I dropped _a lot_ of hints.”

“Clearly they sucked.” She jokes, nuzzling into his neck. His hand tangles into her hair, the familiar way. The way she loves.

The closet doesn’t seem so bad, after that. She loses track of the time, just revels in the feel of Bellamy, in getting to kiss him as long and as much as she wants. When they hear the front door slam, they manage to disentangle themselves long enough to plot revenge.

“As great as it’s been to, you know, declare our love for one another, I’d rather not give Jasper the satisfaction of knowing he instigated said declaration,” she whispers.

“Same. We’d never hear the end of it.”

“I mean, obviously he’ll figure it out soon enough, but I say we torture him as long as possible.”

“This is why I love you,” he leans in for a quick kiss.

“You sure it’s not for my incredible eloquence with words?”

“Yeah, that’s definitely the number one reason.”

There’s a rhythmic knock on the door and they grin mischievously at one another.

“Have you two idiots figured it out yet?” Jasper asks.

“Please let us out, it’s hot in here.” Vague. She likes it.

The knob jiggles as he unlocks the door. Bellamy grins at her as he positions himself in front of it. “I’ll hold, you murder.”

 **Murder** (noun): the exact moment the door opens, two fully grown adults tackle the third, and tickle him until he’s in tears. He isn’t upset about it, however, especially when he spots them kissing less than five minutes later in his kitchen.

They don’t ever hear the end of it. It's his favorite story to tell, but to be honest, it's Clarke's favorite, too. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> fic 2/14. this is really hard, but i'm doing it!   
> come hang on [tumblr](https://octannibal-blake.tumblr.com)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this crack fic as much as I did.


End file.
